Millions of transactions occur daily through the use of payment cards, such as credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, etc. Payment processing systems, involving acquirer systems, issuer systems, transaction handlers to interconnect the acquirer systems and issuer systems, etc., have been developed to facilitate secure and efficient communications among parties involved in the payment transactions.
For example, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2009/0271262, published Oct. 28, 2009, discloses a first authorization request generated to include split payment data. After the first authorization request message is analyzed using a server computer, a second authorization request message is sent to a first service provider, and a third authorization request message is sent to a second service provider, to facilitate the split payment according to the split payment data.
Offers, such as coupons, deals, discounts, rewards, etc., typically involve benefits that are provided to the recipients of the offers after the redemption requirements of the respective offers are satisfied. A typical requirement involves the purchase of a product or service relevant to the corresponding offer.
Processing payments and offers using substantially separate systems have drawbacks, such as inefficient use of computation resources for security measures and processing, duplicative allocation of computation resources for the separate systems, time delay from the time when redemption requirements of offers are satisfied and the completion of the provisioning of the benefits of the offers, etc.
Some systems have been developed to at least partially integrate the payment processing and the offer processing. For example, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2011/0125565, published May 26, 2011, discloses a system to associate an offer with an account of a user in a data warehouse, in which a transaction handler is configured to identify a payment transaction in the account for a purchase eligible for the redemption of the offer. If the payment transaction is identified, the transaction handler provides the benefit of the offer to the account of the user via statement credits. For example, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2009/0112721, published Oct. 28, 2009, discloses a Value-Added Service Engine programmed to determine a benefit associated with a product after receiving transaction information identifying the product and after communicating with a supplier of the product.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0312626, published Dec. 9, 2010, discloses a transaction handler configured to receive an authorization request for a discount associated with an electronic coupon for a purchase. The electronic coupon has been received by the merchant to give the discount on a purchase by a consumer. The discount is to be debited from the sponsor account and credited to an account of the merchant.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2011/0047019, published Feb. 24, 2011, discloses a transaction handler configured to forward a coupon authorization request message, identifying a sponsor account and a coupon, from a merchant's acquirer to a sponsor account's issuer, and when the coupon is eligible, to forward the corresponding authorization response from the issuer to the acquirer.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2008/0133351, published Jun. 5, 2008, discloses a “Method and Apparatus for Reward Messaging, Discounting and Redemption at the Point of Interaction,” in which, upon determining that the transaction is eligible for a discount, the authorization request message is updated to indicate that it is a discount transaction, and this updated authorization request message is then forwarded to the issuer (or issuer processor) for authorization. When a promo code is used by the POS terminal or merchant system to apply or calculate a discount amount at the point of interaction, the full transaction price may be authorized by the issuer, and full transaction price less the discount amount is then cleared and settled between the acquirer and the issuer after the transaction. When a promo code is not used, the authorization system forwards an authorization request message to the issuer for the purchase amount less the discount.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2007/0011044, published Jan. 11, 2007, discloses a host system configured to transmit an authorization request to a credit provider. After discounts available for application to the transaction are identified with the host system and from the identifier of a credit instrument, a modified transaction having a total transaction cost reduced by application of at least one of the separate discounts is coordinated between the host system and the merchant.
The disclosures of the above discussed patent documents are hereby incorporated herein by reference.